A new paper written by the Yale Department of Psychiatry faculty traces the brief history of a new training experience that aims to create more behavioral health services for Hispanic populations in Connecticut.
The Yale Hispanic Psychiatry Fellowship began operating on July 1, 2019, to improve access to care for people with limited English proficiency. It was proposed by two Yale faculty members who documented that the problem of too few Spanish-speaking psychiatrists in the state was contributing to disparities in behavioral health services for Hispanic populations.
A year-long training experience trains one fellow per year with supervision by ethnically diverse leadership and Yale faculty at the Hispanic Clinic of the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC). The fellows became familiar with serving monolingual Spanish-speaking patients and directly served and consulted with patients in settings with limited access to bilingual psychiatrists.
“Exposing a trainee to a program for ethnic minorities confronting the social and structural norms which prolong racist policies is transformative,” said Esperanza Diaz, professor of psychiatry and medical director of the Hispanic Clinic and Latino Behavioral Health System.
Diaz is the first author of the paper, “Addressing Health Equity and Racism Through a Hispanic Psychiatry Fellowship,” published in Psychiatric Services.
The Yale Department of Psychiatry has long been a leader in developing culturally and linguistically appropriate programs to serve Hispanics in New Haven and surrounding communities.
Its 50-year partnership with CMHC has spawned programs like the Hispanic Clinic, the CT Latino Behavioral Health System, and the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS) Health Disparities Initiative, a public-private partnership between DMHAS and the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health.
Faculty long believed that a training program was the next appropriate step to ensure more bilingual psychiatrists were trained to serve Spanish-speaking patients. According to the paper, the fellowship focuses on health inequality and racism in policy and leadership, clinical care for Spanish-speaking patients, cultural psychiatry, recovery, forensics, substance use, and education.
The first two fellows who completed the program were granted faculty status at Yale School of Medicine, increasing workforce diversity. “The first (two) years of training activities demonstrated feasibility, ease of implementation, and overall acceptance,” the authors wrote. “Similar programs can be developed by uniting clinicians and educators interested in addressing racism and health equity, maximizing services for minority populations and eventually increasing workforce diversity.”